By taking the shape of your foreground and masking the background shape only in that area. For example, with merge, if your foreground element also has a stroke around it, when selecting it and the background element merging will remove the stroke entirely and cut the paths where they intersect.Ĭrop - this function works a lot like a clipping mask. What is the Pathfinder tool for in Illustrator This useful tool allows you to quickly manipulate different shapes and strokes to create other, more complex shapes and combine them without having to redraw. Merge - this function works a lot like trim, and to the naked eye they seem almost exactly identical except for a few slight differences. The Trim tool is ideal when preparing vector designs for vinyl cutting and screen printing, it works by cleaning up lines and overlaps throughout the design! Trim - this function TRIMS the background shape with the foreground shape. It's easy to pull up the wrong things or do something like tear the descender off a lowercase "g." Small letters and details can get lifted up pretty easy with the "negative" vinyl if one isn't careful.Six functions that are listed as true pathfinder optionsĭivide - this function ultimately divides the shapes you have selected among their intersecting lines They're already thinking about release taping the graphics and moving on to others tasks before finishing this step.
Some people get in a big hurry and try to weed away big portions at once. If all the cuts are made by the plotter, including weeding lines, then I would have to be doubly sure which pieces of vinyl to pull off the sheet. I prefer making such cuts by hand because there isn't going to be a chance of confusing those cuts with the ones made by the plotter. Good close-up eye sight is probably more critical than a steady hand (particularly with certain dark vinyl colors). The key thing is starting the cut on the edge of where the plotter had cut and being careful not to cut into any "positive" areas of the sheet. It's not all that difficult using a scalpel to manually make cuts in a sheet of cut vinyl. Now you only have the desired pieces of weeding line as separate paths ĥ) Show (the copy of) the text in front of the weeding line(s). This will create a closed path with the lower parts of the text included along with the three new segments created in 2) Ĥ) Deselect, then with the Direct Selection Tool ClickDrag across each of the different unwanted parts of the path and press delete (only once) With the text as two Compound Paths and the weeding line as a stroked path beneath the text, you can:ġ) Create a copy of the whole text (Ctrl/Cmd+C+F) and hide it (both Compound Paths) Ģ) With the Pen Tool Click one of the end Anchor Points of the weeding line, then Click beneath the text on both sides, then Click the other end Anchor Point of the weeding line so it forms a closed path with only the original section crossing (behind) the text ģ) Select everytning and Pathfinder>Minus front I am afraid that with AI, the closest you can get to what you have in mind/are used to, requires your turning the weeding line into a closed path, then clean up by getting rid of the unwanted parts, as follows. I work on big projects and the cleanup is too time consuming. What I really need is just the line segments: Until you remove the letters to see what's left and I have all these artifacts - look at the paths and see below If instead, I use the Pathfinder>Trim option, I get this which looks correct Yet I DO have two intersecting paths selected. When I try and use minus front Shape Modes>Minus Front, (which would leave the line segments I need, get the following error: I also make sure the line is at the back. It does seem to be important that the line has a color for fill. Last week I posted an article showing some great logos using 3D effects and colorful gradients. Tip: Press Alt+Shift (Windows) or Option+Shift (macOS) to constrain your cut to 90 or 45. Illustrator Quick Tips 1 - Complex Symbols with Pathfinder.
Start outside the edge of the semicircle and release your mouse anywhere inside the semicircle to make a straight cut.
#Pathfinder illustrator series#
Press Alt (Windows) or Option (macOS) and drag a series of straight lines. It doesn't seem to matter whether I leave the line as a line or convert it to a compound path. Click and hold the Eraser tool and select the Knife tool. Select all and pathfinder> Merge (this stops the plotter from cutting teeny bits where the letters overlapĪdd a line where I want an extra cut however I don't want the plotter to cut through the letters so I need to trim the line around the letters. Plotters cut EVERY path so extraneous paths are a no-no. I am trying to create a file for a graphic plotter and wanting to add weeding lines.
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